Ian Rickard - About, History and Skills

Xartillus – The Creative Worlds of Ian Rickard and Rick'D

Art and creativity is about communication. After all when early men first scrawled on the walls of a cave one of the main purposes was to invoke an experience. When the first minstrel gave song it was to try and create the feeling of being in someone else shoes. Maybe it is this empathy in art that allows it to cross boundaries easier than more rationalized forms of communication. Maybe art is just as much trying to find the message as it is trying to convey the message. Ultimately if you can make another person feel different, even for a little while, you're probably doing something right.

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One way or another I have been trying to create something for most of the 36 years of my life. Whether its trying to fix things, drawing cartoons and comics or creating 3D models and animation for the computer game industry it all comes comes to the same thing - trying to make things work.
My first real creative training came with a course on how to write and draw comics, which was probably just right for me as this crosses so many of the fields that I am interested in. I ended up in the computer games industry for over eight years with over half a dozen titles making to retail. So here I am now, searching in some ways for my next big thing.

I have always been to interested in too many creative worlds for my own good – I love books and writing, I love music, art, films even television at its best. I am probably too eclectic for my own good. I am jealous of those who have a passion for only one thing, such singular focus would be blessing for me!
However, creativity is a language with many dialects and my eclecticism allows me to learn a little of many of those dialects and as a result, hopefully see a more three dimensional view of the creative world. It allows for a give and take between seemingly different spheres – the understanding of line and form in drawing informing the understanding of form in music and vice versa. Of course much of the media world we now live in feeds on such a state.

I also have an interest in history, psychology and have played with electronics and basic mechanics. The simple understanding of these worlds helps me design and create things with a functional real world aesthetic – I hope to design my own house and maybe other things as well one day.
Although born on Merseyside in the Northwest of England I consider myself a citizen of the world (indeed the universe, though that might be a bit cheeky) and hold no truck with tribal games. I have been a vegetarian for well over a decade – now I've just got to knock off the biscuits!
My general philosophy is that of anti-absolute – although I'm not absolute about that.

I am looking for an audience and not to be famous, I would much rather have a small audience that appreciated my work, that I didn't have to pander to, than spend my life trying to indulge the whims of a mass interested mainly in the cult of personality. I hope this does not come across as me taking myself too seriously for I do not. One of this worlds biggest problems is that people take themselves and what's in their heads far too seriously!

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Software experience:
PhotoShop 5 – CS3, 3DSMax versions 2.5 – 5.1, Dpaint.
Cubase SX, WaveLab, various VST's.
Macromedia Dreamweaver 8 – 9.
Various Text Editors inc. Brief and Word, Exporters and Editing tools of various kinds, Open Office.
Linux - Ubuntu, Mint Gloria, now using a tweaked version of Mint XfCe (for the internet).

Kindle Book preperation. (Html & MobiPocketCreator)

Basic experience with...
Vegas 6.0, Quark Express Passport 6, Adobe GoLive CS.

Diploma in Cartoon & Comic Illustration, Writing and Production

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SHOWREEL

MUSIC

SUBURBAN GUERILLA UPRISING (2006)

Mixing, Mastering and Production

Suburban Guerilla Uprising was a limited release free compilation CD given to subscribers and friends of Zephyr Hawkfrendz. The disc is made up of a variety of donated tracks from artists (Inner City Unit, Temple Zone, The Elasticated Waist Band and others) and rare archive material from the likes of Nik Turner and Robert Calvert. My involvement on the disc included remastering the archive material from private tapes and vinyl as well as mixing and mastering the final production.

WEBSITES
As well as mastering my own website I also ran the website for the Liverpool Film Festival on a volunteer basis, although this has now come to an end. I also run The Zephyr-Hawkfrendz site ( www.hawkfrendz.com ) for a friend, this site is devoted the music and arena of ex-Hawkwind and related music as well Van der Graff Generator, Amon Duul II and Tony Hill.

I also help design and run my fathers (author John A. Rickard) website Ricks's Place ( www.rickpress.com ). If you are interested in books, short stories, poetry etc. then check it out.

COMPUTER GAMES
Below are details of the games projects I have worked on. I worked at Rage Software from January 1995 to January 2003. After this, I went on to work in the fledgling company Indy Games, this was an attempt to create an new independent games developer for the UK, but despite the best efforts and a fine product demo (OFM), the market and financial restraints were against us.

	ROLLING (2003) Sony Playstation2 & Microsoft Xbox Rolling is an extreme sports title based on inline skating. I was one half of the main character team responsible for the design of main character system and pipeline including a full in-game editor. My main areas where in producing all the main skins, weighting, skeleton construction and about half of the animations. I was also involved in overseeing of motion capture and initial design work.
	WILD WILD RACING (2000) *Sony Playstation 2* Wild Wild Racing is an arcade style off-road racing and stunt game. I was involved in building and texturing various background objects including trees and foliage. I also helped out with some object placement and world building when required.
	SPACE DEBRIS (1999) Sony Playstation Space Debris is a 3D shoot-em up in the old tradition of shoot anything that moves. I was involved in model design, building and animation for both backgrounds and population of game. I also helped produce many of the special effects and was involved in manipulation of text files and world building.
	DARKLIGHT CONFLICT (1997) Sony Playstation Darklight Conflict is a tactical space combat game featuring 50 single player missons. As a conversion of a PC game a huge number of model and texture changes were required to bring it in line with the console market. I was involved in reducing and recreating models from the PC version as well as creating level-of-detail and all new models and textures for the game.
	FIFA 97 (1996) SNES All sprites and general art. This included converting high res motion capture renders to sprites suitable for the SNES.

OTHER GAME WORK:

Doom (Saturn conversion) - HUD conversion and fonts.

The original tech demo of Incoming (PC) - object and ship texturing. This demo was used by Microsoft at E3 to demonstrate the games capabilities of 3d cards which had only just been released. These graphics were not on the release version.

OFM (One False Move) (PC, Playstation 2, Xbox - using Renderware) - This 3rd person action game mixing acrobatics and street fighting only ever reached a basic demo phase. I built five characters and did the initial phase of basic character animation and moves. Unfortunately lack of funds meant this project was not taken forward.

Other Projects - Like many, I have also worked on: DeadAhead (N64) - Initial design mock-ups, Incoming Troops (Playstation 2 - using Unreal Engine) - character design/building and Rage Golf (Playstation 2, Xbox - using Renderware) - World building.

For artwork related to these titles please check out the 'GAMES GALLERY'.

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